Ethelwynne M. Quail: The Kingdom of the Gods | The Etheric Field
10th October 2026 - 31st January 2027 | 2 exhibitions at The College of Psychic Studies
Tuesday-Thursday: 11am–4pm
Friday: 11am–7pm
Saturday & Sunday: 11am–4pm
Monday: Closed
Late nights: 11am-9pm
Entry: Free
Join us at The College of Psychic Studies for two distinct but connected exhibitions exploring how artists have developed visual languages to express experiences beyond ordinary perception.
Ethelwynne M. Quail: The Kingdom of the Gods
Ethelwynne M. Quail (1903–1947) was a South African artist and sculptor associated with the Theosophical movement. Working across Ethelwynne M. Quail (1903–1947) was a South African artist and sculptor associated with the Theosophical movement. Working across sculpture, drawing, painting and writing, she dedicated her career to exploring realities beyond the visible world. Entirely self-taught, she developed a distinctive artistic language inspired by nature, mythology and esoteric philosophy, seeking to make perceptible the unseen forces she believed shaped the natural world.
Bringing together more than twenty paintings and drawings alongside archival materials, photographs and correspondence, this exhibition marks the first public solo presentation of Quail's original works. While her sculptures were exhibited in the UK during the 1920s, including at the Royal Academy and the Walker Art Gallery, her paintings and drawings have remained largely unseen. The exhibition focuses on her extraordinary paintings of devas – luminous, non-human intelligences associated in Theosophical thought with forces that shape the natural world – developed through her work with the clairvoyant and writer Geoffrey Hodson during the mid-to-late 1930s. Quail's paintings were later reproduced posthumously in Hodson's influential book The Kingdom of the Gods (1952).
This first public presentation offers a rare opportunity to encounter the scale and ambition of Quail's practice beyond the reproductions for which she is best known – repositioning her as an artist and innovator within a wider lineage of women artists associated with Theosophy, such as Hilma af Klint and Ithell Colquhoun.
Ethelwynne M. Quail: The Kingdom of the Gods is curated by Simon Grant and Jacqui McIntosh (Curator and Archivist, The College of Psychic Studies), presented alongside The Etheric Field.
The Etheric Field
The Etheric Field brings together four artists whose work explores the connections between inner experience and the world around us. Through painting, drawing and sculpture, the artists consider how memories, emotions and sensations shape the spaces we inhabit, and how those spaces shape us in return. The exhibition features previously unseen works by Aleksandra Ionowa and Mila Nowacka alongside new works created especially for the show by Gabriella Boyd and Vanessa da Silva.
Drawing on Theosophical ideas of universal interconnectedness, Ionowa's (1899–1980) works visualise subtle states of consciousness and relationships between spiritual experience, nature and the cosmos. Boyd's paintings translate memory and feeling into visual form; Nowacka's intricate drawings emerge from close attention to bodily sensation and perception; and da Silva's sculptures explore the reciprocal relationship between people and place. United by an interest in traces, impressions and thought-forms, the works suggest that experience is never confined to the self, but leaves impressions that extend into the world around us.
The Etheric Field is curated by Jacqui McIntosh (Curator and Archivist, The College of Psychic Studies), presented alongside Ethelwynne M. Quail: The Kingdom of the Gods.
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